maga at vetbio.unizh.ch
Fri Feb 3 09:03:05 EST 1995
In article <3gj2uh$mds at louie.udel.edu>, landel at helios (Carlisle Landel)
> In article <svgD378pD.95G at netcom.com>, Sam Gorstein <svg at netcom.com> wrote:
> >: Along the same line, while I believe that the lower-case "m" in
> >: mRNA means "messenger" and the lower-case "r" in rBST means
> >: "recombinant", I am at a loss to figure out what the "c" in
> >: cDNA means.
> >It stands for Complimentary. The DNA is complementary to mRNA, and thus
> >has had its introns removed in RNA Processing.
> Actually, it stands for "copy". It is DNA that is copied from mRNA by
> an enzyme called reverse transcriptase.
I am sorry Carlisle, but IU think you are wrong. cDNA has a more general
meaning. You are referring to how cDNA is usually prepared from a mRNA
library, but cDNA stands for complementary DNA due to the fact that it is
the template strand for mRNA synthesis (wihtout introns of course).
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